


the line between

by orphan_account



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bittersweet, Character Study, F/F, Gen, Monsters, Post-Apocalypse, Post-Canon, Walking Canes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22659643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “I have a lot to atone for. But this isn’t about that, this is just…” she thinks to herself, “closure.”“I hope you find it,” says Sims. “Wherever the hell it is, anyway.”Basira-centric fic, post-160pocalypse and Daisy's disappearance; Basira enters the woods to look for an old partner.
Relationships: Basira Hussain & Jonathan Sims, Basira Hussain/Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Jonathan Sims & Alice "Daisy" Tonner, Martin Blackwood & Basira Hussain
Comments: 5
Kudos: 67





	the line between

The air is cold enough to make her eyes sting, but Basira is used to it.

The leaf-covered undergrowth crunches softly underfoot as she steps deeper into the brush, letting herself be enveloped by the trees. It’s risky, she knows— she’s seen what happens to those who wander too close to dark patches. How the holes swallow them up even if, logically, they’re too small to fit a human being in. She walks forward anyway. She knows keeping safe is important. But this, she’s decided, is even more so.

It’s quiet. Sometimes, in this world that’s chaos stretched to infinity, there are moments of abrupt, intense stillness. Another person might call it calming, but it’s more eerie than peaceful. Basira knows it’s a calm before the storm.

In the distance, there are birds chirping. The branches overhead extend like gnarled, twisted limbs, the leaves dangling handlike in the wind. The howls of monsters are ever-present, but they fade to background noise here. Quiet enough to be ignored.

( _“Are you sure?”_

_“I’m sure,” she says, Blackwood sighing unhappily as he wraps a bandage around another refugee’s arm.  
_

_“It’s not that I don’t want you to find her.”_

_But it is. She can see it in the downward curve of his lips, his feeble attempt to flatten it into a neutral line, the crease between his eyebrows that grows ever-prominent with the influx of survivors stumbling over the ‘safe’-line out front. As always, safe is relative.  
_

_“I would be trying even if you didn’t approve, to be honest,” replies Basira. “Nothing against you, but… I think you of all people would understand.”  
_

_A hand hovers up to touch the curl of silver hair above his right ear, twisting it nervously. The symbol of Lonely-touched folk, a permanent emblem of the time he’d spent there, where he’d nearly been lost to the Fears, himself._

_Blackwood swallows. “Yeah.”_

_She studies him. He’s always got a bit of a soft middle– prone to cringing away, flinching in the face of overt danger— well, that’s what she used to think, anyway. In current times, the softness has rubbed away to reveal a steely interior that’s surprised pretty much everyone._

_Yet he’s more compassionate now than she’d give pretty much any other human being credit for, as evidenced by his fussing over the now-wrapped arm of his shaken, still slightly dazed patient. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say Blackwood is the savior of most people living in their neighborhood. He needs no powers, only grim determination and the occasional first aid kit. It’s something she finds herself envious of._

_“If I don’t come back, don’t go out and look for me,” she says. “You’re needed here.”  
_

_“You’re needed too,” he argues, and she can’t help but give a wry smile. Same old Blackwood._ )

She approaches a clearing. The dirt is scattered with old, desiccated leaves and animal bones, some caked with soil and half-claimed by the earth, others fresher.

There are tracks. Basira studies them, though she’s no expert, it’s easy to follow the trail of lopsided, lumbering footprints of something undefinable as human or animal; down, down, down the path they leave and deeper, deeper, deeper she walks.

As she does, she whistles— a hunting we will go, a hunting we will go.

_(“I’m sorry I can’t be of much help,” says Sims from his little alcove in the local shelter— what’s left of an old radio station. He leans in Basira’s direction, head cocked slightly right of where she is, the red stripe of his blindfold cutting a striking line of color through the dark._

_“That’s okay.” She puts a careful but firm hand on his shoulder. “I don’t think you could See her in this mess, though, now that she’s in her… I guess you’d call it her element.”_

_He leans on his cane. It’s an old thing, one she’s seen him use occasionally around the office but mostly for mobility; now it’s doubly important with sight out of the equation entirely. Sims looks a lot older than he used to. Basira’s seen a similar sort of graying out with others, herself included._

_But unexpectedly, the actual effect of the apocalypse on Jon has been making him softer. He is more tired, more small. The end of the world has sandpapered all the sharpness out of him, removing the angles he used to align himself with for protecting himself, and left him vulnerable, kinder, less guarded. He still gets scared— they all do— but he no longer lashes out because of it._

_“You know… I could try doing it. I really could,” he says._

_Basira presses her lips into a thin line. “No. I know it’s important to you not to give the Beholding any more power.”_

_“She was my friend too,” he admits. That had been a surprising development, Basira remembers. But anyone would form a bond like that after a shared experience in the coffin. That’s something almost inescapably binding. Fire-forged, a cauterized wound. “I wish I knew if she was alright, where she was…”_

_“I know she was. But this is my burden to bear, Jon,” she replies patiently, squeezing his shoulder as he sighs through his nose. “I’m the one who lost her, so she’s mine to find again.”_

_Sims shoots her a look that might be pitying if his eyes were visible. “This isn’t some kind of self-flagellating hero complex acting up, is it? Lord knows I’ve had enough of those moments to start recognizing it.”_

_“I have a lot to atone for. But this isn’t about that, this is just…”_ _she thinks to herself, “closure.”_

_“I hope you find it,” says Sims. “Wherever the hell it is, anyway.”_ )

It’s not night, but it’s so dark it might as well be. Basira sees tiny motes of dust floating in the serene, too-quiet shadows, the outlines of the surrounding trees only faintly visible against the deeper recesses of the forest, the only sound her own breathing. Still enough to be a painting. She looks around, listens carefully.

“Daisy?” she calls. “I know you’re out here.”

A darkened shape in the foreground, previously stock-still, shifts minutely. What shifts is uncertain. An ear twitch. The miniscule swish of a tail. All that matters is the movement, and Basira picks it up effortlessly.

She whirls. Daisy, snarling, twisted Daisy, goes back a few paces in the underbrush, her face only a collection of fiercely drawn lines and contours in the deep shadow. Basira cannot see what she looks like. Basira doesn’t find it in herself to care.

She raises her hands. “Daisy. I came to get you. Or if you don’t want to be gotten, just to talk to you.”

A low, inhuman growl.

“You ran away from the Institute and you killed the other Hunters.”

Wide golden eyes reflecting pale green in the dark, pupils dilated, flickering.

“You told me that if you became one of them, to finish the job.”

Claws clacking against the ground like a nervous dog.

“I missed you,” says Basira, closing her eyes, remembering. Her throat is exposed with only the thin cloth of her hijab offering protection. She leans forward, unseeing, trying to think back on the Daisy she knew. “And you know things are different now, we’re all monsters.”

Something is moving towards her, heavy footsteps crunching over bone.

“I don’t need you to be human for me. I don’t need you to be here forever.” Her eyes burn and she squeezes them. “I just need you to be by my side again, just for a moment.“

The footsteps stop.

“I miss you,” Basira says again.

She doesn’t open her eyes. Something heavy and lumbering moves, almost stumbling, towards her. A weight settles next to her, someone sitting down, and heavy, animal breathing sounds in her ear.

“I won’t look at you.” She knows Daisy doesn’t want her to. Wouldn’t have gone so far into the dark otherwise.

A clawed hand reaches out, touches her own tentatively, rough with coagulated dirt and scar tissue and blood. The nails are razor sharp. They trace over her knuckles with such delicacy, so careful not to cut they barely brush the skin, before settling on her hand gently.

Basira swallows back something like tears. She’s not sad, she’s not ecstatic, she doesn’t know what she is right now, exactly. Daisy is here now. She at least has that, and she leans into the familiar crook of the shoulder like they used to when they lived together, Daisy sighs into her hair with a wistfulness so potent it makes Basira almost freeze, and they remain like that without light.

**Author's Note:**

> prompt from @cuddlytogas for post-160 daisira closure, I went for bittersweet and heavy on bitter. writing prompts are always free to be sent to [@prentissed](https://prentissed.tumblr.com/ask) on tumblr.


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